THE credit crunch has led to a cut in congestion on the roads for the first time in at least two decades, a report today revealed.

There has been a 31 per cent reduction in congestion on motorways and trunk roads in the last two years, the report from the AA and road information company Trafficmaster said.

With more people holidaying in the UK and choosing weekend breaks, Friday is the only day of the week when congestion levels have risen.

End-of-term traffic and bank holiday traffic has also increased, according to the report which was based on five years of information gathered by Trafficmaster and from an AA/Populus poll of 75,000 drivers.

There has been 15 per cent less congestion in the weekday morning rush-hour, with 20 per cent of all commuters saying that the economic circumstances had led them to work from home more regularly to avoid the cost of commuting.

Around 14 per cent had used public transport, while 12 per cent had shared cars to reduce costs;

Georgina Read, of Trafficmaster, said: “We’ve been collecting and analysing congestion data for the past 20 years, with all previous years up to 2007 showing the congestion problem growing.

“However, post-credit crunch, the trend has been well and truly broken and we’ve now witnessed two consecutive years of dramatically falling congestion levels.”